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An anonymous reader writes "Throughout the debate over ACTA transparency, the secret copyright
treaty, many countries have taken public positions that they support
release of the actual text, but that other countries do not.
Since full transparency requires consensus of all the ACTA partners,
the text simply can't be released until everyone is in agreement.
A new leak
from the Netherlands fingers who the chief opponents of transparency
are: the United States, South Korea, Singapore, and Denmark lead the
way, with Belgium, Germany, and Portugal not far behind as problem
countries."

It's a bit silly to claim that "most of the world" does it that way, since, well, that's patently false, unless you'd (erroneously) consider the US to be most of the world.

But your other point is still valid; since the Nexus One is primarily offered in the US right now, most of the potential N1 buyers are likely from the US... and since the operators in the US almost universally cover support for the phones, it *is* reasonable to believe that most N1 owners would expect support for it to come from T-Mobile.

Documenting the hardware was necessary, but even fully-documented, it would have only gotten you ~2% of the way towards the ultimate goal of *being* a software-defined modem.

I don't really know anything about software modems, so I won't comment on that, but the release of documentation by AMD was hugely useful to the open source radeon driver.

There's another problem with video drivers -- patents. As a practical matter, everyone in the industry violates at least one patent belonging to the other big players, and they're *all* sitting ducks for every patent troll who comes wandering along.

Except that all of the major desktop video players now -- except nvidia -- have either open sourced their drivers or provided full (as far as we know) specifications for their hardware. Nvidia is the last holdout, and hasn't sued Intel or AMD for infringing on any of their patents.

So, maybe they are indeed violating someone else's patents, but considering that you yourself claim that "everyone" in the industry violates the others' patents, there's obviously an opportunity for cross-licensing, just like lots of other competing companies do.

If it's still true that nvidia is violating someone else's patents, I have little sympathy for them. In that case, they're essentially breaking the law, and hiding that fact.

Yes, because if someone was harassing me in real life to the point that I had to get a restraining order, the absolute first thing I'd think of is my Facebook account.

Somehow I think not.

The bottom line is that someone was ordered not to engage in any form of contact, but, instead of following that order, decided to do so anyway, knowing full well what they were doing. The medium of contact is irrelevant. Intent is king when considering protective order violations. While the defendant is expected to avoid contact with the restrained (e.g., don't go to their place of work to instigate contact), they're not required to go out of their way to make it difficult for the restrained to contact them.

In addition to what the other reply said, it also isn't certain that the stats post-doc was always making decisions based on the statistics. Just like anyone else, his decisions were undoubtedly influenced to some degree by emotions, sometimes not so much, sometimes strongly.

And even if you *are* going by the stats, there's always the human element, and the fact that you're playing against other people who have their own different strengths and faults. Unless everyone around the table is a computer, you can't expect to always play well based solely on the math.

Well, he still has Score:1 (30% underrated) so his message has been deemed at least as useful as a non-AC comment that hasn't received any moderation at all. Regardless, aside from the questionable nature of his assertion that you can "just do a $1MM project with a few minutes of explanation," I agree for the most part with the rest of what he says. You can think that's sad... and I can think you're wrong. Whatever, no skin off my back.

Why? Seems like a straightforward thing to bring up during an interview.

Newsflash: people lie in interviews.

Of course they do. But that's why you ask them to describe some of the things they've done, in detail, and ask probing questions about why they did it, how they did certain things, and problems they had. If they can't, then maybe they're lying. If they can, then either they're telling the truth, or they're exceptional liars.

If their spare-time coding also includes contributions to open source, take notes: it should be pretty easy to check up on after the interview since those kinds of things are usually pretty public.

Unless you are a complete moron it does not matter how bad you are at writing code, what matters is how willing you are to learn to improve.

If that were the case, experience wouldn't mean squat during a software engineering interview. I've done a few interviews as the interviewer, and I wouldn't even consider an applicant who codes poorly, especially when there are so many people who are already more than competent. If they are just lacking experience, that's fine, if the position isn't too advanced. But if they're actually bad coders... no, sorry, but they're just going to be a burden. It's pretty tough to judge a person's ability to improve in a 45-60 minute interview.

Just give them a basic coding aptitude test in their specialist language (on paper, no IDE) and see how they do.

While that's certainly applicable for some jobs, many employers may not find that so useful. I wouldn't say I've interviewed for tons of coding jobs, but I've never had anything approaching a "basic coding aptitude test." The interview questions were usually coding-related, and yes, I've written code on whiteboards during interviews, but most of them are more about critical thinking and problem solving than basic coding ability.

I wouldn't work for someone like you, who expects me to spend all of my free time working without pay.

Way to put words in the guy's mouth.

I enjoy my job in IT and still do plenty of stuff with computers in my free time........but I also do a hell of a lot of things outside of computers in my free time. Sound like you wouldn't hire me just because I date / spend time with friends / play games (video, board, card, anything) / read non-computer books / write / watch movies / exercise / work on my car / etc.

Not sure why you're so pissed; it sounds like you wouldn't be eliminated from consideration based on a hiring filter that culls people who don't do their craft as a hobby too. No one's saying that you have to do it 24/7 or at the exclusion of all other hobbies.

Because I know that in 20 years, you'll be the one burnt out and just wanting to lay down and die

Yes, unfortunately that is one of the dangers of turning a personal hobby into a profession, but some people do manage to do it and are happier for it long term. Don't want to work for someone who prefers people for whom their profession is a hobby? Fine; clearly they don't want to hire you anyway. Everybody's happy in the end.

Unfortunately you do not usually find out if someone codes in their free time until after you employ them

Why? Seems like a straightforward thing to bring up during an interview.

I have spent many years coding in my free time, but now I have been doing it professionally for several years I rarely find the time. I like to spend my free time doing things I enjoy.

Well, that's the thing. Some people, despite coding professionally, still find coding something they enjoy, and something they feel is worthy of an allocation of personal time. It's all about priorities. You can certainly maintain a career, have a spouse, and take care of your kids with a coding habit. If spending your remaining free time fishing (or whatever) is more important to you than a coding hobby, then that's a choice you've made based on your priorities. But some people actually *do* still like to code after their other obligations are taken care of. I'm not saying you're any less of a coder for that *not* being the case, but I think coding for fun can be a reasonable filter that an employer might use. It may have a higher-than-normal false positive rate (catching good coders such as yourself in its net), but it likely also has a very low false negative rate (not allowing bad coders past the filter).